Player The Layne Staley Depression-Laden Foxhole of De'Aaron Martez Fox

[scott]

sometimes I wonder if you guys really watch basketball. He's taking Camara out of the play which is the reason Castle and Harper can go off. Blazers are clearly focused on stopping Fox' dribble penetration.

Do you want him to shoot a jumper when he's triple teamed?
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Thank you. Pretty clear a bunch of people here don't watch the games with an understanding of what's happening.
Fox had Camara on him most of his possessions, than Jrue for the majority of the rest. That's freaking huge, those guys are two of the top 20 defenders in the league.
Fox has been OK, not bad. He's scored more pts than shots in every game, 18:5 A:TO, and is drawing elite defenders, two of the best free safety guys in the league. Its actually really hard to score on both those guys and getting almost 4:1 A:TO is great. Non of this is happening in a vacuum.

OK + taking a top Defender out of most plays is a positive, not a negative. He just looks a lot worse in comparison to the other two, its coming off as a 2x AS that doesn't step in up while a Rook and Soph steal the show.

It's good that at least there are a few people on this site who can see what is obviously happening. I loved the comments in the first quarter yesterday about "Fox disappearing" while Castle got the ball, never passed it, drove to the paint and shot. I guess they were hoping Swipa would come over and steal the ball away from Castle then shoot a middy?

It's pretty obvious that outside of Wemby, POR is primarily concerned with Fox, which is why they've tried to have Camara and Holiday on him for the entire game.

https://twitter.com/x/status/2047891395109658899

This attention on Fox is what opens things up for Castle and Harper... which is why our offense was running a lot better with Fox in the game even when he wasn't scoring. Portland was happy to let the Spurs play a Castle-centric offense, they were +20 through 3 quarters doing that. Meanwhile, through 3 quarters Fox minutes were a +6 for the Spurs.

When Castle returned in the 4th, you could tell he was looking for Harper more and the Spurs were actually playing Spurs basketball: sharp passing, off-the-ball motion, etc. and it started to free up shots for others.

When Mitch went with the Hydra lineup to close the game, the Blazers were forced, for the first time, to pick their poison and they could no longer exclusively focus on shutting down Fox, and that's when he contributed to putting the game away.

It was by no means a great game from Fox (grades coming later), but it was a very useful game from him that helped enable team success. If we want to take the position that because Fox is a max player, we expect him to put up gawdy statlines to lead us to victory... okay, well I guess that's one position to take. But, I'll take this position instead: no matter what any of our guys get paid, if they're part of the puzzle that makes us the best team in the league... then they're doing their job.

lol, I still can't believe I saw an actual suggestion that we trade him for Durant. smh with you people sometimes.

 

[elpimpo4cc]

My bar for Fox is as long as we’re winning, I don’t give a fuck. And if we lose and he’s a big part of why we lose (like game 2), and it repeatedly happens - then I’ll look to him as somebody that needs to go. So far, it’s nowhere near that level.

This is probably the healthiest attitude. Tbh if spurs rang then bring em all back at the max salary we can

 

[scott]

If anything right now, I think there is a Fox-Castle clash that isn't working so far in the playoffs, and Mitch needs to figure it out (and it's not just a matter of not having Wemby... the numbers look pretty similar if you look at it with Wemby in the mix)





The good news is that this is really just a first-3-games-of-the-playoffs phenomenon, because this was not an issue in the regular season. There is just something off to start the playoffs, but it just might be that Portland is a really good defensive team and has devised a strong strategy.

 

[OK Computer]

https://twitter.com/x/status/2048101428267278637